Hebbo Frehbbends,
Just a quick note to say thank you for checking in and reading this from time to time. I appreciate your patronage more than you will ever know and I find you all very attractive-- on the whole-- as a readership.
I know most of you don't comment-- and you know who you are-- and that's just fine by me, because I probably wouldn't comment back. But when you do it warms my cockles and reminds me that my eyes aren't the only ones on this stuff, and that's nice, too. But I wanted to write to you on this steamy summer morning because I have some news.
I thought it might be fun to share with you that the reason there were no posts in July is because I wrote a novel. I signed on-- in a sort of honor system way-- to write 50,000 words of a novel in 31 days, which I just completed yesterday, on July 31st. I was shepherded through the process by this book called, "No Plot, No Problem," written by the funny, friendly guy who started the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo movement eight or ten years ago in San Francisco, I think. You can google it.
He posits that writers spend too much time talking about writing and not enough time doing it, so he challenges writers to write 1,700 words a day for 31 days and I did it. It was hard. No. It was grueling. But I did it, dammit and I hope you'll all cross your fingers for me and pray to the publishing sprites and fairies that my salacious sex-filled novel about sanctioned adultery amongst suburban friends sells a million copies and is in theaters by October.
It was fun and now I can join the pantheon of cocktail party bores who hoist a gin and tonic to their lips, take an important sip, then say, "Why, yes. I am a novelist." Then you can yawn and walk away.
At any rate, I'll keep you posted. And for the love of Pete, contact me if you know anyone in the publishing world. Thanks.
Lurv yous.
All a yous.
xo
Monday, August 1, 2011
Send in the Clown
About once a month my son and I turn the corner in front of my mom’s beach house at the Jersey Shore to find a car parked out front with a bright red, plastic ball affixed to the front grill. The car tells us that Bernie is inside—short for Bernice—and that the house is being cleaned. You see, Bernie is my mother’s cleaning lady. She is also a clown.
For about seven or eight years now, Bernie has been under my mother’s employ and in that time I’ve learned a few things about clowning. For instance, I’ve learned that “clown” is a verb, as in, “I clowned on Saturday and some kid threw up on my shoes,” Bernie might say, “Thankfully they were longer than my feet and made of plastic so I didn’t get covered. I just wiped them off.” Or, “The air-conditioning was broken where I clowned on Sunday, so my make-up started to run and I looked a little like the scary Joker from that Batman movie.”
Bernie is a large woman in most ways with a very friendly face; a face that one could immediately imagine tracing with the large, happy red lips of a clown’s over-the-top smile. Her eyes are bright and her bosoms are huge which, I imagine, would serve to enhance the overall round-y clowness of any working clown in the biz. She speaks not quiet slowly but with the same steady rhythmic inflection on each syllable of every word, as if there were an invisible piano teacher sitting on her shoulder reminding her of the calm, predictable pace of a metronome nearby.
Thankfully, I don’t have to imagine her smile because there is a business card of Bernie in “full clown” tacked up our kitchen bulletin board. “Laffles” it says in a loopy italicized font and she’s available for pretty much any event you can conceive of. Bernie’s longtime husband is also a clown. Sometimes they work together but mostly they work apart. Whenever they’re hired to work at children’s hospitals or for veterans, they never, ever charge them. If she gets hired for a gig and can’t do it, she passes the job onto other clown friends. Apparently there’s a ring of local clowns and they all look out for each other. Sometimes Bernie forgets to collect her fee, and sometimes she collects it then misplaces it. But you won’t hear those stories recounted with bitterness or frustration. There is too much to be thankful for in Bernie’s life to get upset about something like money.
Bernie can’t clean and tell me stories at the same time, and so we stop to talk and catch up with what turns out to be great length. Occasionally she forgets where she left off and misses something she was supposed to clean. It’s no big deal and in fact, gives Mom and me a chance to sharpen our skill at clown puns. Once I came back to my bedroom to discover that the waste paper basket hadn’t been emptied. On my way down to the kitchen garbage to empty it myself, Mom stopped me and asked what I was doing. I explained and she said, “Oh, that Bernie; probably clowning around.”
Sometimes when my son and I round the corner there is a black pick-up truck out front with a hood ornament of a boxer dog welded to the car. That car belongs to Mom’s handyman, Stanley, who is the other person who rounds out my mother’s staff. Stan is a dead ringer for Hulk Hogan in every way except much, much friendlier. He’s got thick, blonde hair that he wears helmeted under a bandana and a blonde handlebar mustache that dips down around the corners of his mouth to meet up with his beard. He wears brightly colored T-shirts and parachute pants with neon yellow and pink triangles—not unlike something you might have seen in a Whitney Huston video back in her heyday—and a single, solid gold chain around his neck the size and thickness of your pointer finger.
His blue eyes twinkle as much as Bernie’s and he’s got that steady cadence speech pattern thing like she does, too. The only difference is that Stan speaks much louder than Bernie because he’s got tinnitus. That’s also the reason why he brings in a boom box to play 1970s biker hard rock at deafening levels when he’s repairing anything in the house. He tells me he listens to music just as loud to fall asleep to as well, but his wife’s used to it. He’s got a Dalmatian dog named, Trixie, and three daughters to whom he each gave a motorcycle when they turned sixteen.
I take great comfort in knowing that my mother is being looked after and taken care of by a clown and a biker with big smiles and twinkly eyes. It’s a little like living on the Island of Misfit Toys but my mom wouldn’t have it any other way. Sometime I’ll tell you about her plumber, Steve. He’s in a rock band with his brothers and sings top 40 tunes from the sixties while he works. Life’s a circus if you choose to see it that way. Sometimes more literally than figuratively.
For about seven or eight years now, Bernie has been under my mother’s employ and in that time I’ve learned a few things about clowning. For instance, I’ve learned that “clown” is a verb, as in, “I clowned on Saturday and some kid threw up on my shoes,” Bernie might say, “Thankfully they were longer than my feet and made of plastic so I didn’t get covered. I just wiped them off.” Or, “The air-conditioning was broken where I clowned on Sunday, so my make-up started to run and I looked a little like the scary Joker from that Batman movie.”
Bernie is a large woman in most ways with a very friendly face; a face that one could immediately imagine tracing with the large, happy red lips of a clown’s over-the-top smile. Her eyes are bright and her bosoms are huge which, I imagine, would serve to enhance the overall round-y clowness of any working clown in the biz. She speaks not quiet slowly but with the same steady rhythmic inflection on each syllable of every word, as if there were an invisible piano teacher sitting on her shoulder reminding her of the calm, predictable pace of a metronome nearby.
Thankfully, I don’t have to imagine her smile because there is a business card of Bernie in “full clown” tacked up our kitchen bulletin board. “Laffles” it says in a loopy italicized font and she’s available for pretty much any event you can conceive of. Bernie’s longtime husband is also a clown. Sometimes they work together but mostly they work apart. Whenever they’re hired to work at children’s hospitals or for veterans, they never, ever charge them. If she gets hired for a gig and can’t do it, she passes the job onto other clown friends. Apparently there’s a ring of local clowns and they all look out for each other. Sometimes Bernie forgets to collect her fee, and sometimes she collects it then misplaces it. But you won’t hear those stories recounted with bitterness or frustration. There is too much to be thankful for in Bernie’s life to get upset about something like money.
Bernie can’t clean and tell me stories at the same time, and so we stop to talk and catch up with what turns out to be great length. Occasionally she forgets where she left off and misses something she was supposed to clean. It’s no big deal and in fact, gives Mom and me a chance to sharpen our skill at clown puns. Once I came back to my bedroom to discover that the waste paper basket hadn’t been emptied. On my way down to the kitchen garbage to empty it myself, Mom stopped me and asked what I was doing. I explained and she said, “Oh, that Bernie; probably clowning around.”
Sometimes when my son and I round the corner there is a black pick-up truck out front with a hood ornament of a boxer dog welded to the car. That car belongs to Mom’s handyman, Stanley, who is the other person who rounds out my mother’s staff. Stan is a dead ringer for Hulk Hogan in every way except much, much friendlier. He’s got thick, blonde hair that he wears helmeted under a bandana and a blonde handlebar mustache that dips down around the corners of his mouth to meet up with his beard. He wears brightly colored T-shirts and parachute pants with neon yellow and pink triangles—not unlike something you might have seen in a Whitney Huston video back in her heyday—and a single, solid gold chain around his neck the size and thickness of your pointer finger.
His blue eyes twinkle as much as Bernie’s and he’s got that steady cadence speech pattern thing like she does, too. The only difference is that Stan speaks much louder than Bernie because he’s got tinnitus. That’s also the reason why he brings in a boom box to play 1970s biker hard rock at deafening levels when he’s repairing anything in the house. He tells me he listens to music just as loud to fall asleep to as well, but his wife’s used to it. He’s got a Dalmatian dog named, Trixie, and three daughters to whom he each gave a motorcycle when they turned sixteen.
I take great comfort in knowing that my mother is being looked after and taken care of by a clown and a biker with big smiles and twinkly eyes. It’s a little like living on the Island of Misfit Toys but my mom wouldn’t have it any other way. Sometime I’ll tell you about her plumber, Steve. He’s in a rock band with his brothers and sings top 40 tunes from the sixties while he works. Life’s a circus if you choose to see it that way. Sometimes more literally than figuratively.
Savage Beauty
I like risk takers and am generally drawn to people who are a bit nuts-o, so I was excited as I headed into the city to see the Alexander McQueen show at the Met. Mr. McQueen was a whack-a-doo couture-clothing designer and the Met has a retrospective of his most outlandish work entitled “Savage Beauty” up through August 7th of this year. I was not an ardent disciple of Mr. McQueen’s and cannot recall his clothes by name, but was just aware enough of his work that I would smile when I caught a photo of his runway show in the paper; of a model wearing resin antlers, or a headpiece swirling with dozens of bright red butterflies completely obscuring her face.
I say “was” because he recently took his own life at the age of 40 and so my girlfriend and I talked about suicide as we waited in line for 35 minutes on the second floor of the Met, ruminating over what drives a person to that daunting brink then tips them over the edge when so many step back. As we chatted we shuffled past pearly white busts of daydreaming Greek gods and the achingly tender embraces of Rodin’s naked lovers. It occurred to me that daydreaming and kissing are two of life’s greatest pleasures and excellent reasons to ride out the most hopeless seeming storm. I wished Mr. McQueen could have held on.
Entering the exhibit was like entering a spooky ride. The sounds of winter wind and labored breathing curled up our legs and hovered above us, reminding me of the old haunted house Halloween album that my dad used to play for trick-or-treaters. It was a fitting introduction to the two pieces of eye-candy that greeted us; one, a long, clingy red dress covered in cascades of rectangular, glass, medical slides painted red; and the other, a floor-length, regal, sleeveless number comprised entirely of layered rows of hanging polished and varnished razor clam shells which, when worn, would give the aural impression of Neptune’s wife sidling up next to you like Mae West. Clearly, we were in for a treat.
Turning a corner, we were introduced to a young Alexander’s graduation collection from fashion school in London. So impressive was his novice work that the collection was purchased on the spot in its entirety by renowned fashionista, Isabella Blow. I could see why: Mr. McQueen had turned the women’s suit jacket on its head. Lapels dipped and meandered along shoulders and chest giving the jackets an understated whimsy, downplayed by the seriousness of the somber black wool. Occasional placards with quotes from McQueen reminded us that he drew great strength from powerful women and was thrilled by the discomfort he imposed on the fashion voyeur every time he put forth a female model as steely and unforgiving as an evil empress.
Knocking and barking, scraping and creaking, the Edgar Allen Poe audio accompanied us into the next room where we were introduced to a more Nine Inch Nails McQueen as renegade recycler, spinning found objects into object d’arts. The skulls of vultures and small alligator heads perched upon molded black leather shoulders as epaulets. Horse hair and shiny black duck feathers made their way onto the silks of gothic gowns. Repeatedly we were reminded that McQueen saw himself as a romantic, but these were no teddy bear infested, heart-shaped confections. McQueen was hell bent on exploring the dark, forbidden corners of romanticism usually conjured by David Lynch or Tim Burton; panicked lovers chased by the gnashing teeth of rabid wolves in murky, moonlit forests—that sort of romance.
The next room was a cavernous visual carnival of his most bizarre and outlandish accessories interspersed with TV monitors showing loops of memorable moments from his infamously dramatic runway shows. Metal spines, alien-type serpents and tails made of brass and steel hugged mannequins next to images of models being soaked by wind and rain or dripping in red bugle beads ringed by actual flames of fire. I cracked up at the earrings made of real pheasant claws holding dripping lengths of pearls between their talons, and the leather high heels molded at the toe to look like bare feet. There were the breast-plates made of molded glass and balsa wood, and the majestic headdresses of drift wood, birds nests and bonsai carved cork. There were the impossible looking, metal-studded and jewel encrusted, high-heeled hoof shoes, worn by Lady Gaga as only she can. And there was the crowd: reverent and agape at the imagination and artistry; energized by the macabre audacity.
I was giddy to learn we still had eight rooms to go. There were a few eight-year-olds in the room and I predicted they’d have a nightmares before morning. There was the conservative looking older man in his seventies who had hired a private guide to explain the show to he, his wife and grandson. They looked very mid-west, with their khaki pants and pastel golf shirts, but I fully respected them for wanting to know about this madman. The grandfather leaned in to hear every word the guide said about passion and misunderstanding, genius ignoring boundaries, and I hoped that my intellectual curiosity would be as open-minded thirty years from now. Curiously, although it seemed in life Mr. McQueen sought to push and provoke, in death everyone was invited in. His clothes did not shirk or slink and neither did his ideas or the women he envisioned wearing them. He was a master craftsman of pomp and creepiness. I’m sorry for the fashion world’s loss and glad we had him for as long as we did.
I say “was” because he recently took his own life at the age of 40 and so my girlfriend and I talked about suicide as we waited in line for 35 minutes on the second floor of the Met, ruminating over what drives a person to that daunting brink then tips them over the edge when so many step back. As we chatted we shuffled past pearly white busts of daydreaming Greek gods and the achingly tender embraces of Rodin’s naked lovers. It occurred to me that daydreaming and kissing are two of life’s greatest pleasures and excellent reasons to ride out the most hopeless seeming storm. I wished Mr. McQueen could have held on.
Entering the exhibit was like entering a spooky ride. The sounds of winter wind and labored breathing curled up our legs and hovered above us, reminding me of the old haunted house Halloween album that my dad used to play for trick-or-treaters. It was a fitting introduction to the two pieces of eye-candy that greeted us; one, a long, clingy red dress covered in cascades of rectangular, glass, medical slides painted red; and the other, a floor-length, regal, sleeveless number comprised entirely of layered rows of hanging polished and varnished razor clam shells which, when worn, would give the aural impression of Neptune’s wife sidling up next to you like Mae West. Clearly, we were in for a treat.
Turning a corner, we were introduced to a young Alexander’s graduation collection from fashion school in London. So impressive was his novice work that the collection was purchased on the spot in its entirety by renowned fashionista, Isabella Blow. I could see why: Mr. McQueen had turned the women’s suit jacket on its head. Lapels dipped and meandered along shoulders and chest giving the jackets an understated whimsy, downplayed by the seriousness of the somber black wool. Occasional placards with quotes from McQueen reminded us that he drew great strength from powerful women and was thrilled by the discomfort he imposed on the fashion voyeur every time he put forth a female model as steely and unforgiving as an evil empress.
Knocking and barking, scraping and creaking, the Edgar Allen Poe audio accompanied us into the next room where we were introduced to a more Nine Inch Nails McQueen as renegade recycler, spinning found objects into object d’arts. The skulls of vultures and small alligator heads perched upon molded black leather shoulders as epaulets. Horse hair and shiny black duck feathers made their way onto the silks of gothic gowns. Repeatedly we were reminded that McQueen saw himself as a romantic, but these were no teddy bear infested, heart-shaped confections. McQueen was hell bent on exploring the dark, forbidden corners of romanticism usually conjured by David Lynch or Tim Burton; panicked lovers chased by the gnashing teeth of rabid wolves in murky, moonlit forests—that sort of romance.
The next room was a cavernous visual carnival of his most bizarre and outlandish accessories interspersed with TV monitors showing loops of memorable moments from his infamously dramatic runway shows. Metal spines, alien-type serpents and tails made of brass and steel hugged mannequins next to images of models being soaked by wind and rain or dripping in red bugle beads ringed by actual flames of fire. I cracked up at the earrings made of real pheasant claws holding dripping lengths of pearls between their talons, and the leather high heels molded at the toe to look like bare feet. There were the breast-plates made of molded glass and balsa wood, and the majestic headdresses of drift wood, birds nests and bonsai carved cork. There were the impossible looking, metal-studded and jewel encrusted, high-heeled hoof shoes, worn by Lady Gaga as only she can. And there was the crowd: reverent and agape at the imagination and artistry; energized by the macabre audacity.
I was giddy to learn we still had eight rooms to go. There were a few eight-year-olds in the room and I predicted they’d have a nightmares before morning. There was the conservative looking older man in his seventies who had hired a private guide to explain the show to he, his wife and grandson. They looked very mid-west, with their khaki pants and pastel golf shirts, but I fully respected them for wanting to know about this madman. The grandfather leaned in to hear every word the guide said about passion and misunderstanding, genius ignoring boundaries, and I hoped that my intellectual curiosity would be as open-minded thirty years from now. Curiously, although it seemed in life Mr. McQueen sought to push and provoke, in death everyone was invited in. His clothes did not shirk or slink and neither did his ideas or the women he envisioned wearing them. He was a master craftsman of pomp and creepiness. I’m sorry for the fashion world’s loss and glad we had him for as long as we did.
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